Lena Dunham Latest Instrument In NBC’s Symphony

“Symphony” is NBC parent Comcast-speak for “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.” It involves various properties of the company promoting each other. In the case of the star of HBO’s GirlsLena Dunham‘s, the music started when the network booked the creator-writer-star to guest host Saturday Night Live for the first time, this weekend. This week, Dunham showed up on NBC’s Late Night, now hosted by former SNL head writer and Weekend Update anchor Seth Meyers, to help keep up his second-week ratings, during which she plugged this weekend’s SNL . Today, NBC News sent out info about a Dunham interview, taped for tomorrow morning, onToday — from the set of Saturday Night Live — during which she talks to Savannah Guthrie about the fact that she is hosting SNL for the first time, and her love of SNL. In the course of that conversation, which will be broadcast tomorrow, she also plugged Late Night, while answering a question as to whether she came to SNL with any sketch ideas of her own. In that conversation, which will be broadcast tomorrow, Dunham said she asked new-host Meyers for advice about pitching the SNL writers, because she “didn’t want to be the person who shows up for the first day of school with, like, all their pencils sharpened, already knowing all the answers.”

“Plus, I recognize that what these people do is such a specific skill, it’s so different than what I do. So I don’t even presume to think that my ideas would work,” she tells Today. “I pitched a couple of them to my boyfriend. He was like, ‘Those are– I think you should maybe keep them in our house’,” said Dunham, on Today, about SNL and Late Night’s Meyers.